Simple and efficient: Growing your business through lean focuses on cutting waste

What is a lean organization? Lean is fundamentally about working with the people in your organization to find the best solutions for your problems. Utilizing your employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities is necessary to identify root causes and involve them in making the organization more efficient.

To truly understand lean, you have to be hands-on and make it a better experience for everybody as a whole by getting rid of extra work that doesn’t add to the bottom-line solution.

Stamp out waste

By utilizing lean, companies should be able to streamline processes and get rid of waste. Note that the idea is to reduce waste — not people.

A common misconception is that lean may reduce staff, but this is not the intent. Even if a position is eliminated through lean efforts, the staff member should be moved to another role and not simply eliminated from the organization.

When working with companies on lean projects, I make sure people know I am there to help and not to judge and point fingers. I try to get companies to understand I’m there to help them achieve the goals that they’ve set. You won’t hear, “You’re doing a bad job.” I say, “You’re doing the best you can with broken processes.”

Management and lean

It is imperative for businesses to study what being lean means. A key component in lean is having a good management team. Management must provide leadership, be a good coach and empower the organization. This is extremely vital in establishing lean in your organization. It is not the “Do as I say, not as I do” motto, but instead an “I’m going to show you. Follow my lead” approach.

It is important for management to look at the company goals, even if it means you may spend more money in the short term, as long as it takes you in a direction that aligns with the company’s long-term objectives.

Initially, lean takes time and financial investment. An early focus directly on short-term costs fosters incomplete decision-making that can end up with the wrong conclusions and the wrong actions. Management should educate associates on good business decision-making where cost is only one part of the equation.

Management and leadership must ask themselves, “What are the investments that need to be made to sustain change?” “How must this be viewed differently from the traditional organization structure?” Management has to put the infrastructure in place by adjusting personnel and attacking barriers when and where needed.

Leveraging the entire company to participate in change makes lean sustainable. Focusing on continually improving processes, driving out waste and making things better will lead to increased profitability.

Sue Via is senior project manager for Techsolve, a Cincinnati-based business management consultant.